Indirect speech in English

We all enjoy gossiping, although we rarely admit it. While being involved in such discussions, it is simply impossible to avoid using reported speech, namely, freely retelling the words of a third person. Therefore, if you are learning English, you need to master this art thoroughly (not gossip, of course, but the art of retelling the words of others).

Several peculiarities of reported speech in English

This type of speech has several peculiarities that are very difficult for beginner students to master:

• Sequence of tenses. When conveying someone's words, we typically report them in a subordinate clause, where we should take a "step back in time”. For instance, if the direct speech was "I am watching TV”, then the indirect speech would be conveyed as "She said she was watching TV”. This means that if a person stated they were doing something in the Present Continuous, when retelling their words, we take a step back and narrate that event in the Past Continuous. However, it is not always that straightforward, as Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous remain unchanged.
• The absence of commas and conjunctions. Americans and English do not like to put commas in complex sentences, and they almost never use conjunctions between the two parts of the sentence, that is, in the example of indirect speech "She said she was watching TV", they simply lose the word "that".
• Changing adverbs of time. Supposing your sister said: "I will visit our grandmother tomorrow”. To convey her words to someone using reported speech, in English you need to replace "tomorrow" with "next day": "She said she would visit our grandmother the next day”. 
• Using the conjunction “if” to convey a question. For example, your friend asks whether you want to go to the movies. In an indirect language, you can say the following: "She asked me if I would go to the cinema”. 

These are just general peculiarities. In order to understand all grammar rules, it is important to study this topic consistently, because it is much more complicated than it seems at first glance.

Indirect speech: all the rules in one course created by Booyya

Experienced teachers and the Booyya platform team have prepared a comprehensive course for you, which will help you learn how to accurately convey someone else's speech in English in 7 short lessons. You will be able to understand all the rules and nuances, thus receiving numerous examples, and reinforcing your knowledge through exercises. Here are a few significant advantages of this course:

• all the information is gathered in one place and divided into sections so that a large elephant can be eaten in small bites;
• the course content is not comprised of dry theory but includes interesting comics and jokes to make your learning more enjoyable and knowledge easier to retain;
• professional English instructors explained all grammatical peculiarities in simple language, allowing understanding their logic without rote memorization;
• the peculiarities of using reported speech are memorably presented through exercises included in the course;
• there are no troubles understanding the information as the course instructor speaks Ukrainian, and it is designed for students at the Intermediate level.

By gaining access to this course, you will be able to quickly master the complicated as well as tricky topic, learning literally with your phone in hand. Because all materials are hosted on an online platform within an interactive textbook that can be viewed on all existing devices.